I’d like to say I’d been anticipating this but to be honest I had no idea it was coming out.
I’m going to keep this one fairly short and to the point.

Looks fairly good, what you’d come to expect from a new PC game. Graphics are good enough to immerse you in the experience fairly well. My system ran it in a high res without issues although I can’t speak for older / underpowered systems, graphical quality suggets you might need quite a high spec pc for this one.

It actually plays really nicely for the most part, considering this was a effectively a console game at heart. There are certain things that crop up in the PC version that as a friend put it, wouldnt be experienced with a game pad. I’ve managed to get stuck in enemies a couple of times which was kinda strange but nothing unforgivable. Playing in the mechanical armour suit was actually brilliant, little bit sad it only happens once in the game actually, it was easy to move and didnt get stuck on anything and the experience was great.

The fact the game auto saves at almost every twist and turn reeks of consoleness (forgive the term), also the fact that on normal difficulty anyone with an ounce of skill will find it almost impossible to die. The QTEs (quick time event, thanks rag / daz) are a little annoying, bash a button as fast as possible when a certain event occurs to melee an enemy off yourself etc. Not great when you’ve bound melee to mousewheel but there we go, aint easy to thrash that thing!

The one thing I will say though is the game isn’t half as spooky as I was expecting, in certain areas at the start it will spook you a little but it’s nothing you don’t get used to quickly. Also the absolute worst feature of this game is the almost total isolation and feeling of just going through the motions. There is only so much scenery that you can change to disguise the fact that you’re just running through corridoors blasting nameless faces over and over again.

As the game progresses the enemies seem to become harder for no reason. The modelling is still the same, the enemies don’t look any different but where a combat shotgun blast to the face would have mashed them in the earlier missions, later on in the game you need 3 point blank shots to the head to kill the soldiers, just another symptom of a complete lack of imagination on behalf of the creators.

Walking around creepy hospital style environments and abandoned schools are good settings for scaryness but I can’t help feel the game’s creators haven’t capitalised at all on the “FEAR” side of things here. After you have one run in with ghosts and see visions of Alma a few times it becomes part and parcel of the experience and you don’t feel threatened anymore. Also there are times where you’ve been running around so long without a trace of any weird activity you start to wonder if she’s plain forgotten about you.

I’ll never forget the first installment of FEAR where I turned around to go down a ladder only to have her stood right infront of me as I spun round to climb down. The shadow of her behind windows only to have her dissapear when you approach, that sort of thing. There was a good scene where doors / windows were going mad in a school with blood all over the ceiling in a pitch black string of hallways that got me mildly freaked out. Majority of it is all so uninvolving though.

One last thing I can’t quite get over is the fact the game is 12GB in size. 3 DVDs of content, I can’t quite work out where it has gone. For a game that is slightly longer than the original which came on 1 DVD I can’t help think this thing has installed around 7GB of spyware on my machine.

Overall I’d say give it a play, it’s not a terrible game, it just feels rushed and they haven’t used the FEAR angle or story line anywhere near as much as they should have.